LONDON – 19th June, 2012 – Sabio, the specialist contact centre and unified communications systems integrator, has helped Thames Water extend its customer service capabilities with the successful deployment of a best practice Workforce Management solution based on Verint's Impact 360 WFM software. The Sabio WFM solution gives Thames Water a powerful mechanism for guiding the performance of its customer contact operations. Advanced features such as agent availability, agent adherence, multi-week scheduling and back-office integration will combine to support the organisation in delivering on its key customer service goals as targeted by Ofwat's service incentive mechanism.

The project builds on the success of Thames Water's earlier introduction of workforce management techniques across its specialist contact centre operations. Working with Sabio, Thames Water was able to realise its vision of a single, centralised planning and forecasting hub across its front office and back-office operations in Swindon. Thanks to Sabio's expertise and the flexibility of the Impact 360 software, Thames Water was able to double its agent planning and scheduling productivity by using its front-office team to manage resources across both the front- and back-office.

"While pleased with initial planning and scheduling improvement returns that contributed directly to annual savings of around £250,000, we quickly became aware that there was a lot more we could do with our WFM investment – particularly if we were able to place workforce management right at the heart of our ongoing customer service improvement programme," commented Robert Tuck, Thames Water's Planning & Performance Manager. "A key goal for our next generation workforce management project was to extend the benefits of centralised planning to other parts of our customer service operation, so we've extended WFM support to our new customer centre in Reading, as well as to other satellite sites and areas that are operationally back-office – such as sewage and treatment.

"Working with Sabio, we've been able to refine our Impact 360 WFM deployment, securing further benefits in terms of schedule adherence and back-office adherence while also empowering our agents with features such as structured holiday wait lists, annual leave availability and much greater adherence visibility," he continued. "Having a best practice WFM solution in place provides us with the controls to zero in on further service improvements, and we look forward to further gains as we continue to refine our WFM deployment."

"Thames Water has been quick to appreciate the value that successfully implemented WFM solutions can bring to major customer service operations," added Michael Andrews, Head of Sabio's Workforce Optimisation Practice. "Having a Planning & Performance team in place has helped the company build up deep expertise in core workforce optimisation disciplines such as workforce management, and we're proud to be working with Thames Water as they continue to refine their contact centre's internal functional efficiency."

About Thames Water:

Thames Water is the UK's largest water and sewerage company, serving 14 million customers across London and the Thames Valley. Every day Thames Water supplies 2,600 million litres of tap water to 8.8 million customers, and removes and treats more than 4 billion litres of sewage at its 350 sewage treatment works, including Beckton in East London, which is the largest in Europe. For more information, please visit www.thameswater.co.uk.

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Workforce Management (WFM) is quite rightly seen as potentially the most valuable tool in the contact centre manager's portfolio, as it effectively provides them with a platform for unlocking the potential of further Workforce Optimisation initiatives.